Music, stuff to do, and stuff did

Good morning!

We’ll have plenty of news soon, but here’s a quick culture roundup, including music from a female kora master, stuff to do, and, in a blast from California’s past, stuff did.

In many West African cultures, griots serve as communal memory banks, transmitting a people’s history, rituals, folklore and values from generation to generation via musicians who share a bloodline. Anglo-Gambian kora master Sona Jobarteh, the first women from a griot family to master the 21-string instrument, studied with her father in seclusion, defying tradition. In 2015 she launched The Gambia Academy, where girls who want to play kora and balafon break new ground–not just as female players, but as students from families that are not griot. Jobarteh, an acclaimed composer, brings her quintet to the Brava Theater Center on Sunday: “For me,” she says, “it’s about being able to raise questions, and stretching the boundaries of the traditions.”

There’s lots of Stuff to do this week featuring brilliant women. Stop by the Mission Culture Center‘s Solo Mujeres exhibition Thursday through Sunday before it closes. On Sunday, check out the launch party at 518 Valencia Street for the bilingual children’s book by Marla Gran and illustrated by Claudia Escobar, once a videographer for Mission Local. And on Sunday Milk will host a queer market for local vendors, from 11a.m. to 5p.m, to celebrate the sprungness of spring.

Jane Sanford co-founded Stanford University with her husband Leland Stanford, a powerful robber baron and politician during the Gold Rush era. A super-wealthy, combative woman with an interest in spiritualism, she was murdered by an unknown poisoner during a 1905 trip to Hawai’i. Natalia Gurevich, who wrote and narrated the podcast Bitter Academia, looks at the stuff Jane Sanford and her many enemies did, in this six-episode true crime series. Gurevich, a former Mission Local intern, researched the mystery by talking with experts in Gilded Age poisoning, spirit mediums, and a few of Jane’s descendants in Reno.

More soon,

Sara